“Need a cigarette?”
“How did you know that? Checking my credit card purchases, or maybe what my doctor wrote in my medical records?”
“There’s a pack of Marlboros on the table — it fell out of your purse.”
She looked and saw them. “Oh, right. Well, the thing is, they ding you two hundred dollars if you smoke in your room.”
“Only if they catch you. But I get it. I’m feeling a little caged up too. Want some company?”
“Sure.”
Five minutes later they were walking a winding path across the commons in front of the hotel. The wind was coming from the east, steady and brisk, and the heavy scent of the sea mocked their urban surroundings. It reminded Lund of Kodiak, only on a far larger scale. She lit up a cigarette, then held out the pack to DeBolt. To her surprise, he took one.
“You smoke?”
“Can’t stand it. But I light up once a year to remind myself why. Usually in a bar somewhere after a few beers.”
She handed over her lighter, and DeBolt lit up with the deftness of a middle-schooler in a bathroom stall.
Lund said, “This system you have to get information — do you realize how many laws it must break? Not to mention the ethical and privacy issues.”
“If I’ve learned anything in the last few days it’s that there is no privacy — not in today’s world.”
They walked in silence for a time, until he pulled to a stop under an elm whose leaves had gone yellow. “Tell me something. Did you talk to any of the guys in my unit … I mean, after the helo accident?”
“About you?”
He took an awkward pull on the cigarette. “Actually, I was thinking more about Tony, Tom, Mikey — the rest of my crew. The guys who didn’t make it.”
“No, not really. But then, I don’t mix a lot with operational types. Why do you ask?”
“I guess I just wonder what everyone was saying. We were tight, and that’s a lot for a small unit to handle.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was hard. But don’t forget, as far as anybody in Kodiak knows, there were four fatalities.”
He said nothing.
“There was a memorial service at the chapel. Pretty much everybody on the station came. Even me, and I stopped having conversations with God a long time ago.”
“Me too. But times like that … they make you wish you were better, don’t they?”
“You mean more religious?”
He didn’t give an answer, but instead looked at her squarely, and said, “Why are you here, Shannon?”
“Because you convinced me over a cup of coffee this morning that you’re in trouble. And given the nature of it — that took some serious convincing.”
“That’s not what I mean. Why did you come in the first place? I’m an enlisted guy who’s technically AWOL. You should probably have me in custody right now. What made you drop everything, buy a ticket to fly across the country, and try to rescue somebody you’d only met once?”
She tried to think of a good answer. “That day, when we talked at the Golden Anchor … I don’t know. I guess I liked you.” She took a deep draw on her cigarette, then said, “No, it was more than that — I believed in you, Trey. I’d heard a lot about rescue swimmers, but you were the first one I got to know. I liked the way you talked about your job, as if it was no big deal. You put your life at risk for others. That’s a noble thing. Honestly, on the day that helo went down … I prayed it wasn’t you.”
“See? There it is again. Praying, but only when you need it.”
“Actually…,” she hesitated mightily, “there was something else. I did a little more than pray.”
He turned to face her, and she saw the unspoken question.
Lund pulled to a stop, but found herself looking at the ground as she explained. “You see … they put out the word at the station that you’d survived the crash, but were in desperate need of a blood transfusion. You weren’t going to make it without one, and they didn’t have any stock of—”
“O-negative,” he said, finally seeing it. “A pretty rare blood type.”
“So I’ve been told.”
DeBolt stood looking at her.
“They took me into your room to do it. You were unconscious, really beat up. You looked so different from the first time I saw you, and…” Lund’s words trailed off there.
He turned away and seemed to study an airplane taking off in the distance. After the roar of its engines died down, he said, “Thanks, Shannon.”
Lund grinned, then contemplated her Marlboro. It was only half gone, but all the same she dropped it on the sidewalk and twisted her toe over the remainder. “You’re welcome.”
Found early the next morning by a man walking his schnauzer, the body was stuck in a stand of aquatic weeds behind a small private school along a minor tributary of Vienna’s Wien River. The police were quick to arrive and cordon off the scene, and quicker yet to realize that the two bullet holes in the victim’s forehead were an assured marker of foul play.
The medical examiner was equally prompt, and he went about his responsibilities with the utmost of care. He recorded the scene meticulously, took DNA samples, and ascertained that aside from the two bullets, all remaining damage to the victim, which was considerable, was likely attributable to the body colliding with rocks in the river since the time of death — between nine o’clock and midnight yesterday evening. Everyone’s work was procedurally sound, and undertaken with the highest degree of professionalism. In truth, quietly more so than in most investigations, this due to the fact that the victim’s identity had been ascertained in the opening minutes. The responding officer had found a passport and wallet in the victim’s pockets. Four photo IDs, three government issued, left no room for doubt.
By ten that morning, the body of General Karl Benefield, United States Army, had been placed securely in the provincial morgue. The United States embassy was discreetly notified.
29
The killer sitting in front of Patel spilled out of a chair that was much too small for his bulk. He was an enormous man, tall and broad-shouldered, a feral counterpoint to Patel’s own stature. He was presently seated behind a desk, his arms crossed over each other like fireplace logs as he concentrated on the lesson Patel had given him today. He was a notoriously slow reader, yet absorbed a surprisingly high percentage of the material. At the very least, his concentration never ebbed. He was perhaps the only man Patel had ever known whose will was greater than his own.
Until three months ago he had been assigned to the First Marine Raider Battalion, the Marine Corps’ lesser-known counterpart to the Navy’s SEAL program. He was thoroughly trained in irregular warfare, and within his tactical squad he was — no surprise to anyone who knew him — a close-quarters combat specialist. Or as his commander had put it so succinctly in a training report, This is the last man on earth you want to make angry inside a closet.
He’d had a sterling military record before his misfortunes — plural because there had been two. The first was three years ago in Iraq. The small reconnaissance team he’d been leading had uncovered a cache of artillery shells in a shed outside Fallujah, and when the unit’s EOD specialist extracted one for inspection it began to leak gas. Of the three members of the squad exposed to the vapor, two were dead within a year. Patel’s killer, however, had survived, albeit with one aberration: he no longer had a hair on his body, every single follicle having dropped off-line. No eyebrows, no whiskers, nothing on his head or chest or arms. Complete alopecia, and something the doctors had never been able to explain. Not that it really mattered — shaved heads were all the rage. For its part, the Marine Corps was delighted to have such a lethal individual back, and they deployed him straight back into the field, rather like a howitzer with a new wheel.